


Maybe tonight I've got a question for you

by Minutia_R



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Angst, Cultural Differences, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Language Barrier, M/M, Magic, Stargazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-13
Updated: 2017-02-13
Packaged: 2018-09-22 03:54:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9582329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minutia_R/pseuds/Minutia_R
Summary: There's a lot of stuff Emil doesn't understand: magic, gods, how to tell if the guy you like likes you back.  But maybe what he doesn't understand isn't as important as what he does.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Talimee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Talimee/gifts).



Emil had gotten a little smarter since the last time Reynir had handed him a scrap of paper with a weird shape scribbled on it. He jerked his hand away and demanded, "That's not going to catch fire, is it?"

Not that Emil had any objection to things that caught fire. On the contrary! But if you didn't know _when_ they were going to catch fire, he preferred not to keep them in his pockets.

"No! No fire!" Reynir said, pushing the paper at him again. There was more, but it was in Icelandic, and Emil didn't understand a word of it.

Well. He understood one word. Reynir said it several times, in the course of his babbled explanation: Lalli. Emil reluctantly took the scrap of paper. His jacket was fire-resistant, anyway. And if Lalli thought it was okay, then it was probably okay.

It just wasn't fair. Emil was supposed to be the one who could communicate with Lalli despite not sharing a language with him. Reynir was a helpless baby who wasn't even supposed to be here and hadn't even tried to learn Finnish or—or anything. So how come he could talk to Lalli about this stuff and Emil couldn't?

Lalli hadn't patted Reynir's shoulder before he left to go scouting, though. He'd only done that for Emil. It was just that—

Sometimes Emil thought that he might like more than shoulder-pats from Lalli. But that was another one of those things where he didn't even know what to ask.

It wasn't like asking had gone terribly well the couple of times he'd tried it back in school, or with the cleansers. And that had been guys who spoke Swedish, and situations where Emil knew at least theoretically what you did. Met at a cafe. Snuck off together when you were supposed to be on watch. He honestly wasn't sure which of those things it was harder to imagine Lalli doing. And he wasn't sure which would hurt worse—if Lalli laughed in his face like Hjalmar, or if he tried to be nice about it like Olle.

Later. That's what Emil had always told himself, when the idea occurred. Later, when he'd learned a little more Finnish and wouldn't sound like an idiot. When the mission was over, and he wouldn't be stuck in the same tiny tank with Lalli if things went horribly wrong.

It was only last night that he'd really understood that later was likely to mean never.

Once Reynir saw that Emil had pocketed the scrap of paper, he'd gone back to his scribbling, his fringe of hair falling over his face, frowning in concentration, tongue sticking out from a corner of his mouth. Emil had the crazy urge to ask him about it all.

_What are you doing, exactly? Is magic real, really real, real like dirt and trees and grenades? Did a huge bird made out of fire actually come out of my flamethrower last night? Am I going crazy? Are there really gods, and if so, why did they let Tuuri get bitten by a troll, and given that they did let Tuuri get bitten by a troll, they seem kind of like jerks, so why do you keep praying to them if it doesn't even help? What do you do when you like a guy and you're not sure if he likes you back, only sometimes it seems like he does, but probably really he doesn't, and it's not a great time because his cousin just got bitten by a troll and he probably doesn't feel like kissing anyone right now, and neither do I really except I kind of do and he's so beautiful that it's all I can do to keep my hands to myself when he's around and it's never going to be a great time because we're all going to die?_

You didn't say that stuff to people, though. Or else—maybe you could say it to a friend. Was Reynir a friend? Maybe. Kind of. But even if Emil said it, Reynir wouldn't understand.

So he sat across from Reynir while Reynir—worked, Emil supposed was the word. And found himself jerking awake every so often because babysitting duty was boring and none of them had slept the night before. Finally Sigrun came to relieve him. "Go take a nap," she said, with a jerk of her head towards the cab, which was pretty much the only place to sleep right now unless Emil wanted to try and get comfortable on top of a pile of books. "Gonna be another long night tonight."

He looked for Lalli when he woke up, but it was just Sigrun and Tuuri in the bunk room, and neither of them looked up from the floor when he poked his head in the door.

"So, how soon are you going to have this rattletrap on the road again, fuzzy-head?" Sigrun said. "Tomorrow?"

"Oh, s-sure!" Tuuri said, bright-eyed and smiling. "I'll just—I—" Suddenly she stuffed her hand into her mouth with something like a sob.

Sigrun scooted backwards. "Or … or the next day. That works. You know. Whenever."

"I don't know!" Tuuri wailed. "I'm sorry, I don't, it's so fucked up, and I can't—"

Emil backed out of the bunk room, hoping neither of them had seen him. Outside, Reynir and Mikkel were adding things to the cooking pot. Emil hadn't eaten since yesterday either. He wasn't very hungry. The sun was dipping towards the horizon. Lalli wasn't back yet.

He came striding up to the campsite with the last of the light, when Emil was just abut done setting up the perimeter for the night. There wasn't time or water for a bath, but Emil put him through a quick decontamination anyway. He would have liked to have taken a little longer with it, if only to reassure himself by touch that never wasn't now, that Lalli was here, alive. Lalli was impatient. And it wasn't like he was wrong. They were—even Emil knew better than to say it out loud, but as far as protocol was concerned, they were basically keeping a live troll in the tank. Decontamination was pretty pointless.

Lalli went into the tank to give his report. Mikkel made Emil stay outside and eat something. Emil would have argued, except that once he got a little of the disgusting stuff into his mouth, it turned out that he was starving. He was scraping the bottom of his bowl and considering asking for thirds when Sigrun came out of the tank.

"Twig says there aren't many trolls left in the area, but we still got a ghost problem. He thinks he and the other mage should keep watches tonight—not that there's much we can do if they do spot 'em. And I'm not having freckles stand watch by himself."

"I'd be willing to share the first watch with Reynir," Mikkel said. "Since I speak his language, I would be able to pass along any warnings of untoward supernatural activity."

Sigrun narrowed her eyes at him and accepted a bowl of soup. "Do that."

"I'll take second watch with Lalli," Emil volunteered, then he caught himself. He didn't want another argument with Sigrun. He was kind of surprised that she hadn't taken him to task for insubordination after the last one. "Uh, I mean. If that's. Okay."

But she wasn't mad. "Great. Good man," she said, and applied herself to her soup without the usual complaints.

Mikkel insisted on decontaminating the bunk room and laying down a couple of planks over the hole in the floor before anyone went to sleep there. Tuuri bunked down in the cab.

A little while later—not nearly long enough—Lalli woke Emil with a light touch on his shoulder. Reynir was already settling into bed, and Sigrun was still snoring. Emil shoved his arms into his jacket and his feet into his shoes, shivering as he pulled on his gloves and followed Lalli up to the roof of the tank. Lalli sat down, stretched his long legs out in front of him and leaned back against the tank's floodlights. Emil did too. Sigrun was right—it was going to be a long night. And maybe nothing would happen.

The scene of last night's carnage looked peaceful, anyway, softly lit by the moon a bit more than halfway full and just skimming the treeline at the edge of the field. Lalli nudged Emil and pointed to it. "Kuutar," he said.

"Kuu … tar?" Emil repeated, stumbling over the unfamiliar word. "The moon?"

"Kuutar. Emil. See. Know."

Emil could count the number of times Lalli had used his name on the fingers of one hand. It had been weeks into the mission before he was even sure Lalli knew it. And it wasn't like there was anyone else out here that Lalli might have been talking to, except—"Are you … introducing me to the moon?"

Lalli pointed again, this time almost directly overhead, his finger moving. Tracing a shape in the sky. "Otava."

"Otava," Emil said. He knew the constellation. His father had shown it to him with the telescope they'd had in the old days. "The wagon."

"Bear home," Lalli corrected him. "Fish bag. See. Know." He added a bit of Finnish, soft and musical—presumably the constellation's Finnish was better than Emil's. Emil felt stupid, but he raised one hand, gave a little wave.

"Hi," said Emil.

The stars didn't answer. Lalli didn't say anything else either.

"What does it mean to you?" Emil had finally found the question that he wanted to ask, but it wasn't the kind of question that could be answered by pointing and naming, and it was too insubstantial to be fit onto vocabulary sheets. "I can tell it means something, but I don't understand—"

He broke off to look at Lalli, who was still staring at the sky, his eyes bright. Not bright like they sometimes got when there was magic stuff going on. Bright like Tuuri's had been in the tank that afternoon. Impulsively, Emil put his hand on Lalli's cheek, swiped his thumb beneath his eye.

"Hey," Emil said hoarsely. "Hey, Lalli, it's okay."

Lalli shook his head, shaking off Emil's hand as well. "Not okay."

The thumb of Emil's glove shone wetly in the moonlight. Lalli was crying. Lalli didn't cry. Other people, when things got to be too much, they lashed out, broke down, lay down and quit. Not Lalli.

"You're right," said Emil. "It's not. Nothing is. Sorry, that was a dumb thing to say."

Lalli turned to Emil, tapped his fingers lightly against Emil's lips. Telling him to shut up. Or else putting the words back into his mouth. "Not dumb," he said.

Lalli still hadn't run out of ways to surprise Emil.

"You, uh." Emil chuckled weakly around the lump in his throat. His own eyes were prickling. He made a clumsy grab for Lalli's hand, and Lalli squeezed back. "You sure know how to flatter a guy, huh?"

They were beyond Lalli's vocabulary again, but he didn't seem to mind. They stayed like that, fingers interlaced, shoulder to shoulder, side to side. Emil looked up at the moon and stars, and Lalli kept watch for things Emil couldn't see.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this after page 670. The title comes from Old 97's song "Question."
> 
> Of course, Emil should know that Lalli is as capable as the next guy of lashing out when things get to be too much. It's not that he's forgotten the Soup Incident, it's just temporarily slipped his mind because he didn't exactly understand what was going on at the time and it doesn't fit with his general conception of Lalli.


End file.
